Motivate Me!

At the end of his book Drive. The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Dan Pink lists nine things you can do to motivate yourself. Because, as he says, Type I's (intrinsically motivated people) aren't born, they're made...

1. Give Yourself a "Flow Test." Here's how it works: Set a reminder on your cell phone or computer to go off at forty random times in a week. Every time it does, write down what you're doing, how you're doing and whether you're in "flow" or not (check this post for an explanation of the concept of flow). Look at the patterns of your observations and think about how you can incorporate more moments of "flow" into your life. 
2. Ask a Big Question... What is the one sentence that should define your life? To make it easier, here are a few examples: "He preserved the union and freed the slaves" (Abraham Lincoln). "He raised four kids who became healthy and happy adults." "She taught two generations of children how to read". What's your sentence?
3. ...Then Keep Asking a Small Question. To ensure that you're continually improving, ask yourself this every night before you go to bed: Was I better today than yesterday? You don't have to be flawless every day, but try to look for small measures of improvement that show you that you're progressing towards your goal.

So What's The Purpose?

If you've read my recent blog entries, you may remember that the first two "nutrients" of intrinsically motivated behavior are autonomy and mastery. But if you're willing to believe Daniel Pink and his bestselling book Drive. The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, there's one more element that should not be overlooked: Purpose.

Autonomous people working toward mastery perform at very high levels. But those who do so in the service of some greater objective can achieve even more. The most deeply motivated people -- not to mention those who are most productive and satisfied -- hitch their desires to a cause larger than themselves. (p. 133)

One example that Pink uses to prove this is the sharp rise in volunteerism, i.e. ever more people working for free, doing something that gives them purpose. While making money is still important to them, it seems to not be enough to really motivate:

The Pursuit of Happy... eh, Mastery

Merriam-Webster calls it the "possession or display of great skill or technique." The dictionary on my computer says it's the "comprehensive knowledge or skill in a particular subject or activity." And Daniel H. Pink, in his bestselling book Drive. The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us defines it as "the desire to get better and better at something that matters." According to him it is the second (the first was autonomy) vital element of intrinsically motivated behavior: mastery.

In other words, if you want someone to be motivated about a task or a job, give them a chance to get better and better and better at it. Pursuing perfection, you might call it. But is that really such an important attitude to have? Pink is convinced it is:

Solving complex problems requires an inquiring mind and the willingness to experiment one's way to a fresh solution. Where Motivation 2.0 sought compliance, Motivation 3.0 seeks engagement. Only engagement can produce mastery. And the pursuit of mastery, an important but often dormant part of our third drive, has become essential in making one's way in today's economy. (p. 111)

Teaching in the 21st Century

I recently came across an article by Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times (online edition) that caught my eye. The title: "Need a Job? Invent It". The content: mainly about education (schools) and intrinsic motivation. So naturally I was curious.

For the most part, Friedman quotes Harvard education specialist Tony Wagner, who has written a book entitled Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World. This is what Friedman writes about his main argument: "...the goal of education today, argues Wagner, should not be to make every child 'college ready' but 'innovation ready' -- ready to add value to whatever they do."

What does he mean by that? Friedman wondered the same and asked. I particularly find the parts I highlighted in bold interesting. These are Wagner's words:

Doing It Your Way

According to the dictionary on my Macbook, autonomous means "having the freedom to act independently." Synonyms include self-governing, independent, sovereign, free, self-ruling and self-determining. For most of us, those are words that we associate with positive emotions. So I think it's safe to say that we like to have autonomy in our lives. And according to Daniel Pink in his book Drive. The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, it is a vital component to being motivated and successful at the workplace.

Blessed Are The Givers

Adam Grant likes to help people. He's a professor at the Wharton School and author of the new book Give and Take. A Revolutionary Approach To Success. And according to him, helping other people is the best thing you can do, if you want to be productive and successful in life. I recently came across an article on Grant written by Susan Dominus in the New York Times that is well worth the read (even though it's quite long). Below are just a few highlights:

"Grant might not seem so different from any number of accessible and devoted professors on any number of campuses, and yet when you witness over time the sheer volume of Grant's commitments, and the way in which he is able to follow through on all of them, you start to sense that something profoundly different is at work. Helpfulness is Grant's credo."

I'm Just Not That Type of Person

You've heard it before. "I don't feel attracted to him. He's just not my type." Or maybe "I would definitely not feel comfortable doing that. I'm just not that type of person." But what do we actually mean when we label someone as "not our type" or announce that "we're not that type of person"? Are we talking about their personality, character, looks (not attractive), worldview (distinct from our own), etc.? Or maybe a mixture of all of the above?

How about someone being a Type X instead of a Type I? Never heard of them before? According to Daniel Pink, who wrote the New York Times bestseller Drive. The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, these two terms stand for people who are generally either extrinsically (Type X) or intrinsically (Type I) motivated. And he has pretty strong opinions on what we need to do in regards to our motivation in order to make our world a better place:

Be Smart When You Reward

There are some things in life that are black and white. Either right or wrong. Good or bad. Helpful or not. Achieving its objective or not. And then there are situations where it depends. According to Daniel Pink, author of Drive. The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, using extrinsic rewards as motivation is one of those things. He's generally not a big fan of the so-called "carrots and sticks" approach: rewarding for good and punishing for bad behavior in order to get the behavior you want. There are just too many things that can go wrong, leading him to sum it up in his seven reasons why carrots and sticks usually fail*:

Paying Your Kids To Take Out The Trash

Ok, so people are complicated creatures. Sometimes they do what you expect them to do and sometimes they don't. And then every once in a while they totally surprise you... by doing the exact opposite of what you expected them to do. Need an example? In 2000 a couple of economists studied a child care center in Haifa, Israel for several months. It opened at 7:30 a.m. and closed at 4 p.m. every day and parents were asked to pick up their children by this closing time, or a teacher would have to stay late. During the first month, the economists observed how many parents arrived late to get their kids. Then, with the permission of the day care center, they put up a sign announcing a fine of 10 Israeli shekel (about 3 U.S. dollars at the time) for each child that was picked up after 4:10 p.m.

When Extrinsic Rewards Fail... Or Worse

It's one of the most popular exercises that psychologists like to use when it comes to testing someone's ability to solve a problem: in this case, the "candle problem." The subject is given a candle, some tacks in a box and matches (see the image). They are then asked to attach the candle to the wall in such a way that the wax doesn't drip onto the table. Most people take about five to ten minutes to find the solution. How long does it take you?

Painting Fences and Drawing For Rewards

Sometimes things can backfire on you. Your actions may have unintended consequences that you really didn't expect. Maybe you gave someone an incentive to do something and it didn't work. Or even worse: he did the exact opposite of what you wanted him to do. When an attempted solution to a problem actually makes the problem worse, economists call this the cobra effect (for an interesting podcast on the subject, click here). And as Daniel Pink notes in his book Drive. The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us something similar can happen when it comes to motivation:

Mechanisms designed to increase motivation can dampen it. Tactics aimed at boosting creativity can reduce it. Programs to promote good deeds can make them disappear. Meanwhile, instead of restraining negative behavior, rewards and punishments can often set it loose -- and give rise to cheating, addiction, and dangerously myopic thinking. (p. 35)

How a Group of Volunteers Beat Microsoft

In the early 1990s Microsoft had a great idea: create a digital encyclopedia to be distributed on CD-ROM and online. There would be hundreds of well-paid employees working on this important project. It looked and sounded like a great idea at a time when people still connected to the internet via dial-up modems and the thought of having the information of twenty of more heavy books (think Encyclopaedia Britannica) on one CD was truly revolutionary. But less than twenty years later, in October of 2009, Microsoft pulled the plug on MSN Encarta. What had happened?